1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for controlling a computer user interface with sound.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
One of the areas of computer technology that has expanded in recent years in input/output or I/O. In the 1970s, the principal I/O devices were punch cards, paper tape, and teletype terminals; remote terminals with display screens were rare, and their displays were primarily text, rarely graphics. Today graphical user interfaces (‘GUIs’) are common, with available manipulation by mouse, roller balls, touch-sensitive screens, text-to-speech converters, and so on. Most computer I/O technology, however, especially on the input side, continues to require some manipulation of an interface by hand. So much so, in fact, that it is common to find it a burden to move one's hand from a keyboard to a mouse and back, again, and again, and again. There is, therefore, an ongoing need for improvement in control of computer user interfaces.